Category: Political

A nation of debtors

Maxed Out Generation – A Consumer Debt Blog
I’ve been thinking about the massive debt that I have incurred as a result of school. It was quite a wake-up call for me to look at the total owed on credit cards and student loans in relation to my income (which is $0 right now) and monthly expenses.
This blog offers a sympathetic human perspective to the problem.
From the blog:
Millions of people are caught in the trap of credit dependence. There is a silent epidemic of shame and anxiety because our society perpetuates the belief that this problem is self-inflicted, that people who have debts are deadbeats. Meanwhile, credit card companies keep coming up with new ways to deceive us and to keep us locked in debt, with the help of our lawmakers. This blog explores the human side of debt, what the credit industry doesn’t want us to know, and strategies for survival.

Clay’s talk about games, rules, code and the real world

Shirky: Nomic World: By the players, for the players
In this talk (edited version online), Clay Shirky discusses code as the rules and structure of virtual worlds (online multiplayer games). Much is stated about the structure that these worlds might assume if control was given to the players and what the out-comes might be. In the end he states: “We should experiment with game-world models that dump a large and maybe even unpleasant amount of control into the hands of the players because it’s the best lab we have for experiments with real governance in the 21st century agora, the place where people gather when they want to be out in public. “

Wow! Japan copyright laws worse than ours..

Japanese website closed after screenshot-related arrest – Ferrago
From the story:
Reports this morning inform us of the rather troubling news from Japan that the owner and Editor of popular online gaming site Gamesonline, one of Japan’s most popular news sites, has been arrested for alleged breach of copyright concerning screenshots used on his website.

RIAA: We must not allow any use, let alone fair use

Mindjack – Will Digital Radio Be Napsterized? by J.D. Lasica
From the article:
The Recording Industry Association of America has discovered that digital radio broadcasts can be copied and redistributed over the Internet.
The horror.
And so the RIAA, the music business’s trade and lobbying group, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to step in and impose an “audio broadcast flag” on certain forms of digital radio.

Clear Channel using patent to keep bands from selling concert CDs

“>RollingStone.com
Another example of patent abuse.
From the story:
Artists net about ten dollars for every twenty- to twenty-five-dollar concert CD that’s sold, no matter which company they use. But with Clear Channel pushing to eliminate competition, many fear there will be less money and fewer opportunities to sell live discs. “It’s one more step toward massive control and consolidation of Clear Channel’s corporate agenda,” says String Cheese Incident manager Mike Luba, who feuded with Clear Channel last year after promoters blocked the band from using CD-burning equipment.

What is the dominant party where you are right now?

Red | Blue from Gravity Monkey
Good illustration of some of the interesting software that may be developed with cell phones as they start integrating various technologies and bridges between them with J2ME.
From the site:
red | blue (pronounced ‘red or blue’) is a free Java app that figures out where you stand, or perhaps more accurately, where you are standing in our politically polarized country.

The truth about the H2 (Hummer)

FUH2 | Fuck You And Your H2
From the site:
The H2 is a gas guzzler. Because it has a gross vehicle weight rating over 8500 lbs, the US government does not require it to meet federal fuel efficiency regulations. Hummer isn’t even required to publish its fuel economy (owners indicate that they get around 10 mpg for normal use). So while our brothers and sisters are off in the Middle East risking their lives to secure America’s fossil fuel future, H2 drivers are pissing away our “spoils of victory” during each trip to the grocery store.

Air America really streams

RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter
Air America broke a couple of records for concurrent streams on it’s first day out of the gate. The article mentions some interesting metrics for internet radio.
RealNetworks said that it delivered 50,000 concurrent streams on the network’s first day of broadcasting (March 31), which the company says makes it the highest-ever usage of the Real Broadcast Network for a “non-breaking news service.”